Chapter 2 #2
His entire body goes rigid. He raises the broom handle toward me and steps forward, as if he’s going to charge. He’s large for a human male, I’ll give him that, but it’s laughable to think he could harm me in any way with a cleaning tool.
“What do you know about Elle?” His voice cracks. “What have you done with her? She’s been missing for months.”
Peeble, because Peeble has never once in their existence read a room, flutters over and lands on Leo’s shoulder. “Easy there, pretty boy.” They pat his neck with one tiny leg. “Gah, good looks really do run in the family, don’t they?”
Leo’s face cycles through about four expressions in two seconds. “How is there a beetle talking to me right now?”
“Oh, honey,” Peeble giggles. “Wait til you hear the story.”
Sarnyx points at the woman, who has freed the last bits of dead branch from her hair and is now standing beside Leo with the kitchen knife still in hand. “Who are you? Elle never mentioned you.”
Leo interrupts, but the woman holds up her hand to stop him. There’s fire in her eyes—the kind that comes from competence, not recklessness.
“I’m Sarah. What my husband is trying to say, in a less brutish way, is that we are very worried about Elle.
” She keeps her voice level, but her knuckles are white around the knife handle.
“No one has been able to find her. Police reports have been filed. It was like she vanished. Leo and I have been coming by to care for the house, and today there was an earthquake. When we looked outside, the plants were alive and attacking. That’s when you all showed up. ”
The word missing sits in my chest like a stone.
I’ve been so consumed by my own grief, months of it, the raw, all-encompassing weight of her absence, that I didn’t think about the people on this side who were suffering too.
People who didn’t have a bond or a locket or the faint, fractured echo of her consciousness to cling to.
People who had nothing. Just silence, police reports, and an empty house.
“I’m Kaelren,” I say, and I lower my voice, softening it in a way I rarely do. “These are members of my crew. We come from a place called Wynmire, and we know Elle very well.”
Peeble, still perched on Leo’s shoulder, bursts out laughing. “Yeah, you do.” They nudge Leo’s neck. “If you know what I mean.”
Leo’s face goes from pale to blood red in a single heartbeat. He turns to me, and the broom comes back up. “What did you do to her, you savage?”
Mora steps between us, hands raised. “Whoa, whoa. I think we need to take a step back here. Elle is alive, but it's complicated.”
“Complicated?” Leo’s voice goes up an octave. “Well, tell me where I can find her so I can bring her home.”
It’s a punch to the gut. If he only knew how much we share that sentiment.
Bryx clears his throat. “Well…buddy. That might be a challenge. Elle has taken, let’s call it a little vacation. It’s literally a once-in-a-lifetime, out-of-this-world experience.”
I place my fingers between my eyes and massage the oncoming migraine. This day couldn’t possibly get worse.
WHACK.
A sharp sting connects with the back of my legs, hard enough to buckle my knees. I spin around, hand already reaching for my blade.
No one’s there.
WHACK. The sound cracks through the air again, and pain blooms across my shins.
“Down here, you imbecile.”
I look down.
Standing at roughly knee height is a garden gnome.
A real one. Round-bodied, white-bearded, wearing faded blue trousers, a stained gardening vest, and a pointed red hat that has seen better decades.
He’s holding a walking stick made from gnarled root wood.
Based on the throbbing in my legs, he knows how to use it.
“Who the hell are you?” I ask.
WHACK.
“What the—quit hitting me!”
“The name’s Raskel, and I’m here to help you fix what your dumbass broke.”
WHACK.
I look up. The others are staring. Peeble has left Leo’s shoulder and is hovering at eye level with the gnome, practically vibrating with delight.
“Oh, I like him.” Peeble’s wings hum with pure joy. “Please, keep going, Mr. Raskel. Leo, sweetheart, do you all have that wonderful treat called popcorn? This looks like it’s going to be quite the entertaining show.”
“Raskel,” I say through my teeth, “I’m trying to be patient with you, but if you—”
WHACK.
“THAT’S IT!”
I take one step toward the gnome, and Sarnyx’s hand catches my arm. She pulls me aside with the firm, practiced grip that says she’s done this before.
“Let’s take it down a notch.” She turns to the gnome. “Raskel. Please tell us why you’re hitting our fearless leader, and where you came from.”
Leo, who looks like a man whose reality has been disassembled and poorly reassembled in the last ten minutes, gestures toward the back patio. “Why don’t we…sit down. Before anything else attacks us.”
We follow him around the side of the house. Last time I was here, I didn’t get the chance to look around. I was too busy pulling Elle through a collapsing boundary between worlds.
I can see why she loved it here.
The back patio is small, deliberately built with mismatched stones laid by hand. Clay pots line the edges, filled with plants that, despite the chaos of the last hour, remain green and reaching toward the sun.
Wind chimes suspend from the overhang. Ceramic. Glass. Copper. They make soft sounds as the air moves through them.
Little trinkets are scattered everywhere. A ceramic frog. A painted rock. A weathered sign that reads Life Began in a Garden.
It carries the spirit of Wynmire, even though it sits in the human world. A place where magic and the mundane learned to coexist.
It feels like Jo. Like Elle.
The locket goes warm against my chest.
Peeble suddenly darts off toward the side of the patio. “Oh my goddess, look! Dr Pepper! A whole container of it! Wow, Elle was serious about this stuff.”
“Yeah, she always went for the weekly sale—” Leo stops himself, jaw clenching. “Wait a minute. We’re getting off track. I want some fucking answers.”
Sarah gives him a stern look. Then she turns back to the group and nods approvingly at Raskel, who has mercifully lowered his walking stick.
“Yes, well.” Raskel clears his throat with the self-importance of someone who has been waiting a very long time to deliver a speech.
“Like I said. My name is Raskel. The Elder Hedgewarden. Keeper of the Rootline Gate. I have been charged with guarding the boundary between Wynmire and the Earth realm from this side for hundreds of years.” He smooths his beard.
“I was supposed to retire this rotation. But this imbecile,” he points his stick at me, “messed everything up.”
Peeble is practically hanging off Leo’s shoulder, drooling with interest. “Oh, please do tell. What has the glorious Kaelren done?”
“He hasn’t brought her back!”
Silence.
“Who?” Bryx asks carefully. “Elle?”
“Yes, Elle! Gods, why am I punished to work with such unintelligent people?” Raskel thumps his stick on the ground for emphasis.
“Without Elle here to act as the stabilizer from the Earth side, our two worlds will fracture and eventually both will crumble and die. There has to be a balance. It was always the two of you. Her from the human side, you from the Fae realm. Tethered. Bound. The anchor and the root.”
“But she had to disperse herself to save us,” I say, and the words taste like ash coming out. “She scattered across the threads of time. That was the only way to break the convergence.”
Leo launches himself halfway across the table. “She did WHAT?”
Sarnyx catches him by the back of his shirt and pulls him down. Bryx holds up both hands. “Hold on there, cuz. So, Raskel—you’re saying Elle’s sacrifice wasn’t the whole solution?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, you cotton-headed nincompoop.
Her dispersal stopped the clock. Bought time.
But it didn’t fix the underlying problem.
” He jabs his stick toward me, then toward the general direction of Wynmire.
“The two of you must be bonded and together to hold the realms stable. That’s how it’s always worked. That’s how Josephine designed it.”
“I’ve been trying,” I say, and I hate how raw it sounds. “I’ve spent months searching for a way to bring her back. Every archive, every elder, every forgotten text in Wynmire. Don’t you think I want her here?”
“You’ve had the answer the entire time. You were just too dumb to see it.”
Mora gasps softly. “Kaelren. Of course.” Her eyes drop to my chest. “The locket.”
I reach for it without thinking. The small silver pendant I haven’t removed since Sarnyx found it in the rubble after everything fell apart.
I’ve noticed it growing warm when I think of Elle.
Warmer when I reach for the bond, warmer still in the moments when her fragmented consciousness brushes mine across the distance.
I assumed it was an enchantment left by Jo. A comfort. A reminder.
Not a key.
“Well, that’s great,” I say. “But how do we use it? There’s nothing written about it anywhere in Wynmire. I’ve looked.”
“Because the answer isn’t in Wynmire,” Leo says.
Everyone turns to look at him. Raskel looks up at the human with something approaching approval. “Finally. Someone with some brains.”
Sarah touches Leo’s arm. “Honey, what are you saying?”
Leo runs a hand through his hair, his expression shifting from fury to something more complicated.
More tender. “Grandma Jo always said the same thing. Every time Elle or I asked why she spent so much time in the garden, why she talked to the plants.” He swallows.
“She’d say, ‘The garden is where my heart lives, and heart brings us home. You can travel a thousand worlds, but if someone holds your heart and stands in the place where you grew, you’ll always find your way back. ’”